David Eagleman and Richard Holloway discuss Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives November 11, 2009

Author and neuroscientist David Eagleman will join broadcaster and former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway to discuss Eagleman’s hugely-acclaimed bestseller Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, a collection of wonderfully imagined tales on life after death. The evening will also include recorded readings from writers, actors and musicians including Nick Cave, Clarke Peters
(Lester Freamon in The Wire) and Stephen Fry, among others.

In the afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. Or you may find the afterlife contains only those people whom you remember. In some afterlives you are split into all your different ages, in some you are recreated based on your credit card records, and in others you are forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent what you could have been.

These are stories about what might happen to us after we die. But more importantly they tell us something about what it is to be human and how to live and appreciate our lives now.

’You will not read a more dazzling book this year than David Eagleman’s Sum. If you read it and aren’t enchanted I will eat 40 hats.’ Stephen Fry

'Sum is terrific. It’s such a good idea that I was grinding my teeth all the way through wishing I’d thought of it first. The inventiveness, the clarity and wit of the prose, the calm air of moral understanding that pervades the whole thing, add up to something completely original. I hope Sum will be the great big hit it deserves to be.' Philip Pullman

'Witty, bright, sharp and unexpected . . . as surprising a book as I’ve read for years. Every story is a new Heaven.' Brian Eno

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives is published by Canongate priced £9.99.